Pentagon Fights EPA On Pollution Cleanup

[Lone_Star_Dem]

Source: Washington Post

The Defense Department, the nation's biggest polluter, is resisting orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up Fort Meade and two other military bases where the EPA says dumped chemicals pose "imminent and substantial" dangers to public health and the environment.

The Pentagon has also declined to sign agreements required by law that cover 12 other military sites on the Superfund list of the most polluted places in the country. The contracts would spell out a remediation plan, set schedules, and allow the EPA to oversee the work and assess penalties if milestones are missed.

The actions are part of a standoff between the Pentagon and environmental regulators that has been building during the Bush administration, leaving the EPA in a legal limbo as it addresses growing concerns about contaminants on military bases that are seeping into drinking water aquifers and soil.
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Under executive branch policy, the EPA will not sue the Pentagon, as it would a private polluter. Although the law gives final say to EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson in cleanup disputes with other federal agencies, the Pentagon refuses to recognize that provision. Military officials wrote to the Justice Department last month to challenge EPA's authority to issue the orders and asked the Office of Management and Budget to intervene.

Experts in environmental law said the Pentagon's stand is unprecedented.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/29/AR2008062901977.html?nav=rss_nation

[crickets]

1. Geez, nobody wants to follow the rules lately.

Can't imagine who set the example... K&R

[LaStrega]

2. OMFG the GALL!

"The actions are part of a standoff between the Pentagon and environmental regulators that has been building during the Bush administration, leaving the EPA in a legal limbo as it addresses growing concerns about contaminants on military bases that are seeping into drinking water aquifers and soil."

Please, Mr. Bugliosi, PUHLEEZE find a prosecutor with the cajones to follow through with what your book outlines so completely and irrefutably.

:kick: & rec

[lonestarnot]

3. Was whatever blew up the Pentagon filled with a brain eating bacteria?